Enemy

This game is reminiscent of something from like 30 years ago so like 2010 I think I saw this but it was called polybius or something

The controls are down right bizarre. It almost ruined the game for me. However, it is one of the most unique games on Steam, and uniqueness should be rewarded, even if the uniqueness makes it a bit difficult to learn the controls.

This game is more or less voxel xcom game (meaning you can blow the landscape and buildings up into little cubes). Like xcom, the game is brutally punishing, especially at the start, but as you learn the tricks of this game and gain gear / stats the difficulty begins to even out until you surpass the game.

A good example is boss fights - every boss fight takes place in a castle map. The first few times you do them, you'll probably go at them like I did room by room and get spanked. Then you start to figure out how to set up good team reaction cover so when you open the door, your team will get some shots off. Then you will figure out how to open up walls with explosives, jumps, or throws. And how to set up a fire trap. Finally towards the end you will simply ambush enemies from the outside by blowing open walls and blasting them with an entire round of salvos all while the ceiling comes raining down on their heads before they even get a turn.

I enjoyed my time with it once I got past the frustrating start and recommend it if your looking for an interesting take on the xcom style.

With backing up your save you can complete the game in a couple hours.

Also, achievements don't work lol. (At least for me)

But all things considered, It's a cute little game that I think is worth buying.

Don't look at this game and think that this is a minecraft clone, don't think its ugly, don't see it as a terrible game just by looking at it in surface value, it maddens me that people look at this game and people immediately think that this game is trash because the game's graphics ain't the best, but the gameplay and mechanics is really what counts, I tell alot of streamers about this game, because i want to see somebody stream this game and i only had 1 maybe 2 people who said this game was terrible by looking at the graphics... Feels great.

Let's start with the gameplay click a character, move a character rinse and repeat until you fight an enemy clearing Enemies in areas is a really good way to play the game and probably the only way to play the game but that doesn't matter since you can leave anytime assuming that you don't have any enemies following you

The four biomes:
The four biomes in this game, go as follows the plains, the swamps, the desert, and savanna. The plains is a good starter biome to play on, the swamps... Ehhh not bad but the ghosts are a little annoying, the desert pretty dangerous especailly in late game, savanna: fuck that place, the explosteves do quite alot of damage the cannon guys do too much, there is so much going on in that Biome is too much... atleast the boss there is easy.

Weapons:
Weapons are good, the early and late game as far as weapons go is very balanced and you can have lazer weapons if you get far enough, that is all i have to say...

Problems with the game:
This isn't a review without some criticism, the first problem i see is the savanna the place has too many powerful enemies and they can potentally oneshot you especally if you get unlucky enough for the map to make you fight the boss second in the rotation but if you are prepared for it, you might be fine, but reaction is required for that place too. The graphics look fine i guess, but i play alot of minecraft so i am not going to base it off of that but everything looks... gloomy, the savanna looks happy enough but i have a burning hatred for that biome so it doesn't matter too much, but the game is overall good if you ignore the graphics

This game is really good, and is not just a underapreciated gem, its unapreciated sword created by a hero binded by the greatest gem of all time... that is quite an exaggeration I know but the game is amazing, i hope a sequel comes out soon, and maybe this game would get the recognition it deserves.

This land has seen better days. The four warlords that rule it are harsh indeed and their legions of minions will destroy any who would challenge them.

That's where you come into play with your tactical skills and squad of hopeful heroes that are most likely headed to certain oblivion. But one day the enemy shall be vanquished if you persevere and you'll be known as the savior of this land.

Maybe there will even be enough of it left to recognize you as such.

Here's how good this game is. 99% of the time, I hate strategy games. I find them to be too rigid, too restrictive, and too... strategic? which is a weird criticism to give to a strategy game, I know, and Enemy definitely rewards careful strategy, but my problem with other strategy games is it feels like that's ALL it rewards. In Enemy, you can come up with some stupid, off the wall, hair brained strategies that shouldn't work at all, and it CAN work, and even if it doesn't, you'll have fun with it.

The key aspects to this, I think, are the physics-based environment which collapses into chunks when it takes damage, and the chaotic nature of it being randomly generated. I don't play this game well at all. I start off on the platformer world with stats put into throwing and endurance, every single time. I tend to lose really early on in the game, but I'm having fun the whole damn time.

One of my recent favorite moments in this game was when I was being attacked by anonymous gunmen who were setting the ground on fire around me. They set one of my party members, the princess, on fire. The princess specializes in throwing, so I ran over to the nearest enemy, picked them up, then ran back into the fire so he would die with me. The sacrifice wasn't worth it, as my last party member died shortly after. But the fact is that I had more fun with those few moments before losing than I ever have with any other strategy game. I want to see more strategy games that give you this much freedom to make bad decisions and have fun doing it.

Just be aware, however, that this game isn't free from bugs, but from my little experience so far, the developer is very open and receptive and is still working on polishing the game. I'd recommend this game regardless of whether or not it's on sale, please just play this game.

A brutally difficult game that combines the visual aesthetics of Minecraft with the tactical combat of the original X-Com. Default difficulty (which allows achievements) comes with ironman (lack of) saves, so beware!

The plot is short and to the point: the world has been taken over by four boss characters. It’s up to you to stop them.

You start with three characters: two random allies and you, a character who, aside from determining your starting world, and having a blank slate as far as skill points (you have 5 points to assign as you choose), is totally expendable – it’s entirely possible that by the time you get to the second (or even first!) boss that your party will not include any of the original three members.

You’re thrown into combat as soon as you leave your house, and depending on which world you started on (‘platformer’ world - which has giant mushrooms, green pipes, floating treasure boxes, and red brick walls - tends to be the hardest start, with the possibility of spawning living bombs who throw themselves at you, blowing huge chunks out of the area and killing pretty much anything unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius) you may well start losing characters just about immediately.

There are a number of different weapon classes which you can use: various melee weapons, pistols, rifles, bows, crossbows, spells and staffs (which throw out small bomb-like or inferno projectiles), and perhaps my favorite: brute strength, which allows you to rip out chunks of the game world and throw them at your enemies.

And here we come to one of the more fun aspects of ENEMY – the entire world is made up of little cubes, which can (and will) be destroyed in the course of your fighting. Walls will get holes in them, and will eventually buckle; trees will fall down in an explosion of leaf blocks. Trying to get into the boss castle, but the corridor outside the throne room is a deathtrap? Blow a hole in a back wall and go through that way, or if you can make your way up to the roof, toss a bomb and crush everything in a rain of bricks!

Both sounds and music are basic, but serve well enough.

Only two things come to mind as complaints: first that the interface doesn’t seem to have any way to automatically make sure that you hold enough APs in reserve to fire a shot during your interrupt; second is that the game can start to struggle if there are large amounts of bricks falling all at once, as can very well happen in town battles if you (and/or the enemy) use lots of bombs, fire, or staff weapons.

Well worth picking up if any of the above catches your interest.

Finally! A *high quality* turn-based tactics game with fully destructible (and throwable!) environments, with the added bonus that every casualty is at least as dire a consequence as in XCOM. And, better still, you can actually specialize in that very ability to pick up pieces of the environment and throwing them. Just, um, be careful about pulling blocks out of large structures, lest you risk discovering the excellet mechanics for attempting to extract yourself (some enemies may force you to learn). Oh! And you can level up your jumping ability to do longer, higher jumps, and even land on your enemies.

I could keep gushing, I really could. You won't regret this purchase one bit; you'll only regret any time not spent playing it.

Here's a real hidden gem on the Steam store! It's kind of like Jagged Alliance (Or Old School X-com if it were an adventure instead of full-on strategy), only with a copyright friendly 80's gaming theme running about it.

Upsides

+Combat System: It's sort of like Old-School X-Com where there's a little randomness given to physical shots but otherwise they do have an effect on the environment (more on this later). However it is suprisingly easy to grasp and there are multiple viable tactics and means of attack (ranging from melee to environmental, to some simple psychological warfare to name a few) given the streamlined interface. There's also an RPG element, your characters level up and you can dump them into various stats, as well as picking up or looting various items, weapons and Armor.

+Theme: It's basically a tribute to a bunch of old school 80's games mashed into an RPG-Strategy hybrid AND BOY DOES IT WORK! (And it is really funny to see a rifle pop out of a copyright friendly "!" block). Elements from Contra, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Final Fantasy and more are seamlessly integrated in this game and gives it a ton of personality.

+THE PHYSICS ENGINE!: Here's the real star of this game. You see, despite the grid based movement and the number crunching. What really drives everything is an honest to goodness Physics engine, and it makes the game a complete joy to play! I'll list several examples below

• You can pick up and throw LITERALLY ANYTHING and there's even a skill for it! It's actually suprisingly effective, though requires some setup.
  
• Enemies behind a tree? Chop it down by shooting it! In fact the first time I got squadwiped that's what happened! A merc machine gunned a tree down like a bad 80's action movie, killing 2 of my squadmembers (the last one panicked)
  
• Lots of shrubbery in the way of your target? Throw a Molotov or a fire bomb at the shrubs and burn them out! Fire spreads too!
  
• Enemy in a building? blow the wall open next to them with a time bomb or a boulder and cave the roof in on them!
  
• Enemy nearby and you think he's going to wreck your squad? Have a guy with some energy saved up jump on him mario style!
  
• Use Melee attacks to shove enemies into things (or off cliffs, in rivers, ect!)
  

• It makes perfect sense in the context of theme and mechanics
  
[*] IT WAS JUST ONE GUY WORKING ON IT! Speaking as a programmer who has (at absolute best, and it's almost certainly an overestimation) mediocre art skills I get it. Art isn't everyone's strong suit, and 3D modeling anything remotley presentable is HARD and requires as much dedication to be even a halfway decent programmer. That all said I firmly believe Tom did the best he could do with the tools given.

Extremely cool game with really satisfying tactical decisions. Reminds me of Jagged Alliance 2 without taking umpteen hours to get anywhere or start doing cool stuff, and without all of the fiddly economic management. Right from the jump, you'll be: accidentally bulldozing walls, knocking trees over onto enemies, starting uncontrollable fires that threaten to engulf everything you hold near and dear, and assessing every map for every exploitable tactic you can muster in an effort to keep your squad alive as the world starts scaling beyond what your six-person squad can honorably annihilate. The game gets tense as hell, as the intended play mode is essentially Iron Man mode in a world with dwindling resources. There's an easier mode with saves and less dwindling, but fie on that.

In a lot of ways, it's an ingeniously modernized X-Com 1/2 or JA2, in that it strips out all of the base-building and research and economic worrying, reinvests some of that into character leveling, simplifies the controls to what are actually necessary, adds genuinely destructible terrain and structures with good physics and fire modeling, and makes the time between booting the game for the first time and doing something fun about 2 minutes; and it does all this while still retaining the fundamental complexity of the squad tactics in X-Com/JA2.

An unkind reviewer would say it's JA2-lite, which is true in a sense, but I don't have a problem with that. I'm not trying to spend 200+ hours fomenting a revolution again; I'm just trying to sledgehammer someone into and through a wall.

Also, surprisingly good music, sfx and cryptic NPC dialogues.

That's a solid turn-based squad light rpg, add that everything is destructible and you have a great game.
I felt back what i felt during my first missions on x-com (90's), when every single action you take as a real impact on the outcome.
The gameplay is truly thick:
Noise system is great. Overwatch is so much better than x-com's, the 3d is trully used here since you can jump on higher grounds or destroy something to drop it on your target...
Don't pay attention to my game time, most of it was on the demo but i already played something like 20 hours before writting this.
If you like turn-based fighting: A must have!
If you like challenging games: You'll have to learn, go get it!
None of the above: Why the hell do you read this, click on the store page already :)

The game is somewhat slow paced, but thats almost a requirement for the amount of options you have available for roaming. The combat options feel fantastic. You can trickshot trees onto enemies, use smaller rocks for cover.

Anyone who gave the game a second shot after the introduction of an inn like feature for saving and for healing might be disappointed. I didn't have enough money at any point to use it.

Mobs are fairly unbalanced, and if you make the mistake of playing in the trope with Knights you'll find you have zero ways to take them out before they can kill everyone at early levels.

Furthermore, theres no indication of mob levels apart from a red warning box if the difference is extreme. Up to 5 levels different encountered so far. Having a knight NPC who took ~4-8 points of damage from behind only, took no morale damage from frontal hits, and had 80 health could kill 5 PC's in a turn when berserked (from morale "damage")
Grenadier mobs seemed somewhat strong offensively but could at least get shot down, bombed, or bum rushed if you're careful. The knight was hitting for 60ish points of damage on my level 3's on my second mission. Also this was on the easiest difficulty, which increases your medical drops.

The claim to "roguelike" only comes from a lack of saving apart from lower difficulty settings using the inn. The only way to save is to quit the game to continue later.

So, this one is a pretty interesting game, conceptually. It has alot of things going for it. It's a tactical squad strategy game, which reminds me alot of Silent Storm, actually. And clearly takes some inspiration from the old Xcom games.

There's alot going on here; you've got randomly generated maps, a big worldmap to explore, towns to go to and buy stuff in, characters to recruit, and a wonderful destructible landscape. It's very satisfying to watch things shatter when they are hit, and every individual brick or block or whatever is a seperate entity, and can collide with and injure characters. There's tons of different weapons and items, an easy to use level-up-your-skills sort of thing, and of course permadeath.

But, there's one thing that, for me, absolutely grinds this all to a halt and keeps it from meeting, or even getting close, to it's potential, and that's the morale system, if that's the correct word.

Every character, friend or foe, has a stat representing their mind/morale/courage. When enemy attacks are fired at your characters, they'll take a hit to this number... no matter if the attack misses or hits them. When this drops to zero, they will flip the hell out, and either run around like utter morons (problem number 1) or go berserk. The running around bit is a problem because it DOESNT MAKE ANY SENSE. I understand the idea of representing a "fight or flight" response, and the urge to get the hell out of there to save yourself. Too bad it's so poorly implemented though. Your characters wont run AWAY from the enemy; they'll simply run in totally random directions for awhile. And I mean TOTALLY random. They absolutely will end up standing 5 blocks away from 2 guys with shotguns and a ninja, or just stand in an open field with snipers everywhere, or.... you get the idea. This makes no sense at all. These guys, if they're going to panic, should run AWAY from the enemy. You know, like people would actually do. You run AWAY from the threat. Not just zoom around in different directions followed by shoving your nose up the barrel of some guy's gun. They can also go berserk instead, at which point they'll try a desperate attack against an enemy, and this one DOES actually work like it sounds, and so isnt much of a problem.

But then there's the way the whole thing is activated. As I said, when attacked, your guys will get more and more scared. But here's the thing: they'll get freaked out EVEN IF IT MAKES NO SENSE. If they're up against some guy who is so fantastically stupid that he's on the other side of the map, fires a gun DIRECTLY at a heavy object that's RIGHT in front of him, and thus hits it, your guys, who again are on the OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP, will stand there and go "HOLY EXPLODING COWS, BATMAN!!! That one almost hit me square in the forehead! What a deadly sniper that guy is! I better get away!". They will do this every. Single. Time. And believe me, it gets really old, really fast. You end up having to come up with somewhat odd tactics JUST to deal with something that is basically broken from the start. Not a good thing, and for me, even though I wasnt exactly dying much, it just got so damn stupid that my interest just shattered. Even if I won the map, I was like "That.... that was just so dumb. I had to change my strategy because the bad guy pretty much shot himself in the foot a mile away, causing my idiot melee guy to run into the open and do a little dance for no reason!" and.... yeah. I was just done at that point. I love strategy games, normally. But when they hit a point where logic just goes completely out the window, I just lose interest.

And that's pretty much what happened with this one. Being totally honest, I dont think that mechanic is even necessary. Particularly considering the theme behind the game. Your guy isnt just some random idiot; he's clearly an adventurer, having already been on assorted game-ish quests, like being a horror game protagonist, to hopping over spikes and into pipes like Mario. The pathetic reactions to.... basically everything.... just dont make sense in this context. I can understand a mechanic like that being added to up the difficulty. But there's SO many other ways to add extra challenge without having to resort to something like that, as so very many other games have proven already.

All in all, it's not a bad game, but just has some glaring flaws (as that's not the only odd issue it has) that for some players might ruin it entirely. I strongly suggest watching some videos and lets' plays on the game before buying, to get a sense of how it works.

For now though, I cant entirely recommend it myself. But your tastes may definitely differ from mine. Again, it's not bad. But particularly when compared to so many other strategy games out there, it just doesnt quite hit the point where I can genuinely give it a positive score here.

Honestly, I'd rather give it a more neutral score, but Steam's overly simplistic system here doesnt allow me to say "Well, considering everything, I think this is a 6 out of 10, it's a decent game and you might like it but there's definitely some big issues". And I do still play it. But since I cant just outright recommend the game and am suggesting that people watch some of it for awhile before buying, I'm not giving a thumbs up here.

Wow, just wow.

This game scratches so many of my gaming itches.

*Turn based tactics
*Physics
*Destructable environments
*Nostalgia!

To top it off, the developer is the biggest boss of Boss City. See my thread for details: http://steamcommunity.com/app/339570/discussions/0/598198173701001264/

Notice that he fixed everything I requested in a few days. That's bananas. Please download the demo, try it, and then proceed throw money at this man's head.

(Note: Do not literally throw money at this man's head. That's weird. Don't be weird.)

While playing this game, you will learn some valuable things about the wonderful world of Enemy:

• You can pick up civvies and toss them into the water so that they can drown for 5 or something points and the others won't even bat an eyelid. In fact, you can even kill everyone and no one would ever run or put up a fight. Perhaps they think you're just playing with them?
  
• You can dress up as a Princess or use an actual one and take on mobsters, purple masked men, skellies, and more enemies while armed with a Hugh Jazz stone block many times your own weight.
  
• Despite the fact that you can stomp mechants who charge you outrageous prices, you cannot loot their steel chests for their wares. Of course, the huge box can be used to completely demolish the side of the hotel when that greedy concierge works.
  
• P.R.I.N.C.E.S.S. stands for: "Person Reprogrammed to Immediately Neutralize Castles by Excessively Slinging Stuff."
  
• You can jump inside the tall green pipes and end up somewhere else on the map and jump onto the yellow floating boxes, just like in those games about an Italian plumber and that gorilla. Just don't expect to get a mushroom or an all-consuming dino mount for your troubles.
  
• Is an archer shooting at you from the safe confines of a wooden house? Are you too lazy to break in and deal with him/her? Simply throw a molotov or a fire ball at the door and watch the helpless bastard get barbequed and/or crushed by the collapsing roof after a few turns. Kind of like the movie 'The Wickerman', only that he'll be burning like wicker, man.
  
• Melee fighter + Explod'steve = Dead teammate + stupidity
  
• Despite interrupting an Explod'steve in mid jump with a ranged character, you can still miss even with 60%-70% accuracy, often with humorous/frustrating results. This happened to me twice within the same playthrough. Needlessly to say, I didn't get lucky twice.
  
• You can lose your created character even in your first battle. This is never game-ending though as he/she is 'just another character'.
  
• For a game world where four powerful kings are ravaging the lands and invading towns, there is currently a complete lack of (friendly) soldiers and guards in the field or inside the towns. In fact, there's no government officials or rulers anywhere. Perhaps they all died in a huge combined counterattack on the Four Kings' bases when they first appeared. The only member of nobility in this world is the Princess and she's content with becoming the world's most mobile and dangerous siege engine.
  
• This is a thinking person's game. Doing the classic Zerg Rush will result in you being Zerg dead and it'll be Game Over for you, Zerg. Plan your moves carefully and you may even win the battle without losing anyone.
  
• This is like 'Long Live The Queen', except that your princess is a badass and it'll be her enemies who won't get to live long.
  
• Cranky Kong would've loved this game if it didn't have so much physics.
  
• The Princess could actually be Chuck Norris dressed in drag but if that was true, then the game would've already been completed in like a second. When the player looks at the places he'd travelled through afterwards, they would see that there is nothing left...
  
• There's a dinosaur man in this game who could very well become the Princess' apprentice.
  
[*] Due to the nature of combat in this game (stray projectiles, bombs, Explod'steves, falling trees, flying debris, etc.), you'll spend less time causing devastation to the surrounding environment in each battle than you will spend actually winning, even unintentionally. To win a fight without hurting a tile of grass or dislodging a chunk of tree bark is more likely to happen with luck than with strategy.

Solid gameplay. I love the throw back to the old school x-com difficulty. It's pretty early to give a definite good or bad, but assuming dev's continue to develop along the current model, I'll be extremely pleased with the outcome. That being said, it's in need of bug fixes, and slight balancing, but if you're willing to put up with an alpha, this is a great game for hardcore strategy lovers like myself. 8.5/10
UPDATE: Blizzard, plz nerf fire..
UPDATE: PLZ UPDATE.

Enemy is an underapreciated Gem on the steam store. I'm assuming if you're reading about Enemy you're already familiar with squad based tactics and roguelikes. (If you're not, I'd check out other reviews). The unique aspects of the game include the destructable environment, the 80's video game idiom, a surprisingly easy game to mod in your own content, and a good level of squad customization. And of course, the combining of the squad turn based tactics and elements of the roguelike genre such as permadeath, no ability to reload saves, and procedural generation so that each game is unique.

The deliciousness of the voxel-based fully destructable world cannot be underestimated. Watching a a walking bomb blow up a house, grenading a section of the castle ceiling on someone, or debris smack your players around are all deeply satisfying. The unit customization is fun to mess with, and allows for a good variety of squaddies. You can have troops that react quickly to incoming enemies, ones that can see far and keep calm in difficult situations, ones that can move farther and jump higher when they need to, and ones that just don't die as quickly.

On the weapons of choice, in addition to ranged and melee you have bombs (throwing grenades for the most part, though you have land mines, tear gas, time bombs and staves) and Throwing. Throwing is a bit of an odd duck in some aspects-it's definitely the skill I'm most likely to injure my squad mates with, but picking up chunks of castle and chucking them provides for deeply satisfying moments. It also requires a bit more set up as you're constantly scavenging for the best things to throw at people and/or relying on other units for damage as much as you can.

The really neat thing is that, say, unlike X-COM, you have near complete customization when it comes to character growth. While the supporting troops you get are from a set of random archetypes, over time you will be able to mold them into the troops you want.

In terms of unique game mechanics for squad based tactics, the two major additions are mental damage and reaction fire. Mental damage is taken when your troops are hit or nearly hit, set on fire, or other various phenonama occurs. When it hits zero, your character will either go beserk, attacking the nearest enemy, or panic. I haven't seen this occur much in my own troops (I make the Mind stat a priority) but deliberately initiating it in the enemy is good fun. Firing shots with little to no chance of success becomes a valid tactic, and I've panicked more than one enemy by throwing bridge sections at it.

A high reaction stat allows you to interrupt movement and actions by enemies. And if you have low reaction they will at times interrupt your actions. Multiple interrupts a turn can happen, especially if you're moving your chaacters cautiously. Doing so and leaving extra time units with them will add a great deal of longevity to them. It's not just reaction fire too-being able to step a few steps back or forward can be more than enough to turn a sudden enemy into a managable experience. I find it to be a quite enjoyable addition to the genre.

The game mechanics are not that readily apparent to the player (though Tom has added in assistance here and there) , especially one unfamiliar with squad based tactics norms, and I think, rightly or wrongly, that the developer is relying on player familiarity with the genre to a certain extent. Given that many people may be drawn to it for the nostalgia factor, I suspect that the relatively unforgiving mechanics are a bit of a rude awakening.

With that in mind, the game has been quite well supported beyond its release. I originally had three more paragraphs detailing bugs, changes, and additions to the game that I thought would add to its longevity. The Creator is active on these forums and has been diligent in squashing bugs and working to ensure the longevity of the game. My original concerns and suggestions have been more than dealt with, especially with the addition of difficulty modes. With just a few modders, I believe Enemy can continue to shine for years to come.

Ignore the graphics. Just pretend they don't exist. Pretend the entire game is wireframes and untextured areas.

Because this game is an absolute gem, and their graphical design choices are likely to bury it in "kids game" obscurity.

So, down to the gameplay. This is a squad tactics game, very heavily into squad tactics. It's very important to have your squad approach every situation carefully or you can swiftly find your entire group dead.

The tactics come down to how to kill enemies that are wandering around the map in such a way that they don't cause the terrain to murder your whole team. You can hide behind a tree and snipe from there, but you're likely to have the tree shot. One shot might be ok, but more than that and the whole tree will come down. Or you can use the same physics to your advantage. Blow a hole in the side a building the enemy are in to surprise them from behind. Or just collapse the roof on them. Or push a tree over onto your enemies.

The weapons all feel unique and impactful, and there are many different build paths that you can pursue in terms of skills. Having a balanced team is important, because many weapon have different advantages or disadvantages.

My feelings are mixed on this game. However, if I were asked by someone drawn to this game by the X-COM comparison in the description whether it was a good buy or not, I would tell them to pass. Why?

Combat in Enemy feels like a conglomoration of stripped down mechanics from XCOM. There is no surpression mechanic, but there is 'Morale'. For some reason important, information such as telling the player exactly what they are improving when they level a character is also absent. For example: A player wants to increase the ranged skill of a character. Telling the player that every point they put into said skill increases their chance to hit by a "moderate" amount is totally worthless. What is "moderate"? 10%? 50%? It's like this for every skill and every weapon.

It is impossible to telll how skills and weapons synergize with one another and how much damage you're going to be putting out at your level. The same goes for armor. There is an entire shop dedicated to armor and there are is only two types of armor that seems to actually offer protection despite dozens of options to choose from.

Combat itself is extremely bland. There doesn't seem to be any sort of critical hit chance, nor are there any abilities that are unique to any class or character. The Platformer class plays identically to the Action class if you put points into the correct skill. Not to mention that there really isn't a whole lot to do in combat itself. You either can attack or you move, like checkers. There is no flanking mechanic, no 'real' cover mechanic, no surpression, no interesting abilities that allow you to control enemies, no nothing.

There is a poorly implemented version of 'overwatch', however it's pretty much worthless.

This is all really dissapointing because at it's core ENEMY has some really cool ideas. It's totally bizzarre to me why the devs didn't design some sort of cover mechanic in a game with voxel based destruction. It's totally bizzare to me how they have something like fire propagation but don't have something equally cool for the other elements.

I get that this is sort of supposed to be a Tactical Turn Based Roguelike and it's supposed to be touch. However, Roguelikes are also supposed to offer opportunity, choice and encourage experimentation. There should be at least 3 or 4 ways around every enemy in a roguelike, the cost and avaliability of those choices combined with limited resources make roguelikes fun to play. You may lose horribly, but at least you learned something.

Not so with Enemy. It all boils down to playing the Line of Sight game from a FPS mentality rather than a TBS one and hoping something doesn't pop out of the fog of war and kill you instantly.

So to wrap this review up: If playing roguelikes and games with a cut down version of the XCOM's combat than Enemy is sure to meet you about 1/3rd of the way there.

Enemy is a game that caught my eye when it first appeared in the “upcoming” section of Steam. I read the description of the game and it sounded like it’d be exactly the sort of game I’d enjoy.

Having played the game I’m pleased to report that it is exactly the sort of game I enjoy! :)

So far I’ve played a few hours, in that time I’ve got to grips with the various mechanics of the game, had a few characters killed off and managed to defeat the first boss. I’ll sum my experience up with a few pros and cons below:

Pros
+ The combat is great fun – it does remind me of the old Xcom games and while it can be quite brutal you only ever end up losing a character if you do something silly (running out of energy with your melee character!). That said occasionally something mental will happen…like missing and knocking a tree on yourself but that’s all part of the fun (not to mention hilarious!).
+ So far there seems to be plenty of weapons and items to use as well as challenging enemies.
+ All of the terrain in destructible and is often usable tactically. For example know there is an enemy in a building? Chuck a grenade through the window and collapse it on him!
+ Procedurally generated…a different game each time you play!
+ The difficulty looks to be about right – I’ve not been massively outmatched so far but it’s also not a cake walk (I thought it was going to be when I had five characters but then I managed to get two of them killed!).
+ Game is pretty solid and I’ve only encountered one bug so far. I’ve flagged it in the forum and within about 15 minutes Tom had responded requesting more info. I’m impressed with his dedication and desire to make the game the best experience possible for those that have purchased it.

Cons
- I can’t really think of any but if I had to pick anything I’d say that some of sound and the music can start to grate after a while. However this is quite a minor grip.

Conclusion:
It’s a great game and fully deserving of the £10.99 price tag. All the more amazing since it was created by one man!